Surfaces

It was you, in clouds of breath last night,
glass cold to the touch;
swans in headlight beams and shafts of dark.

Clearly there is a surface. Below
absurd webbed feet trundle and
crazed fish eyes glare and dart
one beat from beaks and birds’ eyes narrowing

for those lie-in-wait-predators-Pike
who hover over eels and leeches
hidden by the mire that settled.

On a glance you’d think nothing disturbing

these five used cars since you left

I’ve silenced the songs or moved them.
I’ve read poems into fragments.
I’ve sought your skin in softer others.
I’ve hung you in the darkness of your hair.
I’ve launched your smile to the moon

and, with dust, all these things I’ve sprinkled
and flooded with other women’s waters
and laid down a surface by my hardness
and surfed it with beauty and sex.

It is you last night in my car.
I leaned and kissed you.
Hey Presto - we still fitted - Pandora’s box -
things flurried and burst out the dust
heading for the surface.
We pushed gasping air between us
glad to be still floating. Apart.
In the rain-pocked windscreen
a million swans moved over the surface
repeating in every tear-like lens.


      Des Dillon

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